I have over 2,400 titles on my account from Amazon and was thinking of permanently deleting around 1,000 or so titles.

Most of those titles are ebooks I now figure I will never read and now have no intention of ever reading them - although at the time I thought I would. I realize now here are just way too many better books and authors to read. (At the time, they were all freebies and I snatched them up like a zombie in search of brains, my acquisitional lust all-consuming.)

Permanently deleting about 1,000 will still leave me with around 1400 or so titles.

Anyone else going through this kind of situation, where you just want to make your ebook life a little easier to manage?

I only have about 1500 ebooks so far, but I'm pretty careful about adding what I will have a pretty good interest in reading. So for me, the answer would be no, and doubly so if they were paid for, even $.99 books. I keep all my books on my PC though and only load about 100 or so on my reader at a time now. If I only stored them on my reader (which is a bad idea), then I'd probably delete them. Ebooks on hard drives take up minimal space... filling your reader to excess with them I find just slows down your reader.

Otherwise, depending on how long you live, you might run into the free time to actually read those titles and they may interest you again.

I rarely see, or even use, the ebooks stored in my Amazon account on Amazon servers. I treat it as a last ditch backup and just tend to let it be. I do continuously cull my personal copy of my library (that I keep on my own hardware), though. But that process doesn't have anything to do with whether they're "Indie" or not. It's simply based on whether or not I realistically see myself ever reading something.

I rarely see, or even use, the ebooks stored in my Amazon account on Amazon servers. I treat it as a last ditch backup and just tend to let it be. I do continuously cull my personal copy of my library (that I keep on my own hardware), though. But that process doesn't have anything to do with whether they're "Indie" or not. It's simply based on whether or not I realistically see myself ever reading something.

This. Thank you for keeping me from having to type out my response.
Apache

When I first switched to mainly ebooks I downloaded a lot of books from various sources - especially all the free books. After a few months I realised I was never going to read a lot of them and tried to trim it down to stuff I could realistically see my self reading. Since then I only add books I want to read. I've only got 378 books in calibre right now and it grows at a rate of a few a month at most.

I've haven't bothered to delete them from Amazon but most of them didn't come from there anyway.

If I bought a book, I want the option of being able to read it again, even if I don't read it again. Perhaps Amazon could have a "deep archive", where you can put books that you are less likely to read again. The longer people have e-readers, the more unwieldy Amazon's archive system will be. There needs to be better ways to organize and navigate it.

I rarely see, or even use, the ebooks stored in my Amazon account on Amazon servers. I treat it as a last ditch backup and just tend to let it be. I do continuously cull my personal copy of my library (that I keep on my own hardware), though. But that process doesn't have anything to do with whether they're "Indie" or not. It's simply based on whether or not I realistically see myself ever reading something.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apache

This. Thank you for keeping me from having to type out my response.
Apache

However, the actual process of deleting them is a daunting task, since Amazon does not allow for bulk deletions, to the best of my knowledge.

This is why I never buy free books until I know I want to read them.

Also:
I've always found it ridiculous to have thousands and thousands of free (or pirated) ebooks in Calibre. You can't read all that. Even at a rate of one book per day, it'll take you around 3 years to read 1000 books. What's the point of having 10K books? It'll take at least 30 years to read them, probably much longer.

Same with music and movies. I have 400 CD's ripped to FLAC. A fair amount; I also have 300 movies and 350 or so (real) books. Sometimes I buy something new. I've been buying stuff for only 15 years, but I've seen every movie, read every book and heard every CD all at least twice in those 15 years.

Some of my friends pirate stuff, and they have 5.000+ CD's (one of them actually has over one million tracks in total, so that's around 50.000 cd's....), 20.000+ eBooks in English and another 20.000+ in Dutch, and also have 5.000+ movies. (edit: And they also have hundreds of games too. I actually forgot the games in this post. I've got 37 of them, of which around 30 at gog.com.) That's ridiculous. It wastes hard drive space. It's just hoarding for bragging rights; an "if it's on Usenet, I must download it"-attitude. You can never see, read and listen to all that. Even though it's allowed in the Netherlands (at this moment), it's completely useless to do it.

If I need to go find something new to read, see or hear, then I'll do so when the time comes: then I buy it, and read, see or hear it. Then I'll archive it on the computer or on my shelves.

I'm a voracious, eclectic reader; and I used to be a very careful reader but with the advent and popularization of the ebook - along with the proliferation of free ebooks from Amazon - has made me a very careless reader of late.

I'm going to rectify that and get back to the books that really matter.

The fact is, these books are free today and, if not, they'll more than likely be free tomorrow. So, my sense of urgency has greatly decreased with this realization. As little as about 2 years ago, freebie ebooks were just not that common. Now, with programs that Amazon (and other publishers) have enacted, getting free ebooks is a quite normal process.

All of my 300+ Fictionwise titles [now nook] are conveniently on calibre, but the quality of those ebooks - for me - is much higher than most of the Indie titles I've acquired from Amazon. (My perception of this is verified - for me - by reading a few pages or even a chapter or two.)

Which brings to the discussion a sense of 'perceived quality,' with a mass of dreck from Amazon that is (or will be) free, while the ratio of Amazon dreck to other publishers is quite small, simply because they are smaller players and because now Aunt Petunia can publish her book and have all her relatives and loved ones review it favorably. Even Uncle Bucky probably has 10-to-20 titles available. Everyone who has a computer and an Amazon account is writing a book.

I've been thinking about deleting my Amazon freebies too -- but just the ones I've read and don't want to reread. I try to be selective with what I choose to "buy", but because they are free, I'll also take chances I would never have taken with paid books. Some are gems, some are ones I wish I'd left alone.

Now my husband has been buying the kids Kindles and I've been buying books for them from Amazon (I buy books for myself in epub, not from Amazon) -- it's too hard to keep track of their books, the audible books that Amazon dumps into my Kindle library AND the overwhelming number of freebies.

I'd like to be able to separate my purchases from my freebies, but I don't know of any way to organize my Amazon archives. Also, I'm a book hoarder so simply deleting books from my account puts me into a panic.

I'm going to do it though; my Amazon account has 1067 items in it -- a small number compared to some others, but I don't want to have to manage that many unimportant items (it would be different if I *wanted* to go back and re-read them.) And I do have to manage them -- it's compulsive.

I'd rather ebook stores had every single book ever written and allow me to be the final arbiter of what's "good." Quite frankly; I value my dim-witted second cousin's opinion on a book's quality much more than I do New York's, right now.